Saturday, 4 February 2017

Daesh lashes out in Syria following Iraq set backs

Daesh lashes out in Syria following Iraq set backs

ISIS steadily losing ground. Iraqi forces successfully recaptured the
eastern side of Mosul from the militants, forcing the group from Mosul
University and advancing to the east bank of the Tigris River which
divides the city in two.
All of Mosul's bridges across the Tigris
have been destroyed either by Daesh or coalition airstrikes to prevent
the movement of the other side. Meanwhile, the city’s western periphery
is guarded by Shia Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries, who are preventing the militants from easily evacuating to Syria.
Aside
from Mosul the militants only retain pockets of territory in Anbar
province, where the Iraqis are on the offensive against them in the city
of Hawija west of Kirkuk. Daesh has been unable to counter its
incremental losses with new offensives. One attempt to stir-up chaos in
Kirkuk and takeover the oil-rich city during the opening phases of the
Mosul operation last October ended in abysmal defeat.
Consequently,
the militants have sought to lash out and launch fresh attacks in
neighbouring Syria, where they have had some success in recent weeks.

That's not to say that the group is not under pressure in Syria. Last
November the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia
launched an offensive aimed at eventually retaking the group’s primary Syrian stronghold, the northeastern Syrian city of Raqqa.
SDF
forces are currently advancing from the north to Raqqa's west, where
they are hoping to take the strategically-important city of al-Tabqa on
the Euphrates River. Syrian regime forces faced an embarrassing defeat
when they attempted to seize al-Tabqa from the militants last June,
after being repelled by hundreds of IS reinforcement
Today the SDF
claim to have killed at least 620 of the militants since beginning
their offensive in early November. Faced with the prospect of losing all
of Mosul, from where their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the
formation of the so called “caliphate” in June 2014, and possibly losing
Raqqa as well, the militants have sought to attack elsewhere.

In
mid-December they successfully recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra –
which they had previously overrun in May 2015, only to lose it in March
2016 to a Russian-backed Syrian regime advance. This time they are
clearly compensating for their previous defeat by destroying parts of
the city's Roman-era amphitheater. which.
Presently, in the
eastern Syrian province of Deir az-Zour, IS is besieging Syrian regime
forces in the provincial capital, attempting to capture the city's
military airport, a key Syrian military enclave there. For over two
years now Syrian soldiers have fought a Daesh siege on that city,
preventing the city from falling to the group.

The group’s offensive in Deir az-Zour this month is the deadliest and
most significant in over a year. It has resulted in World Food
Programme (WFP) aid air drops to the city's approximate 100,000
civilians halt for two weeks. Russia has responded by sending its large
supersonic Tu-22 bombers all the way from Russia itself to bomb the
militants in an attempt to halt this offensive.
If the militants
manage to defeat the isolated Syrian Army enclave in Deir az-Zour and
seize the city, they could set up an alternative headquarters to Raqqa
there. Deir az-Zour is approximately 90 miles southeast of Raqqa and
deeper into Syrian territory.
Its capture would give Daesh a
little more strategic depth against the SDF, their most significant
adversary on the ground in Syria, and also an opportunity to re-mobilize
and re-organize if they were to lose Raqqa. An opportunity they have
been successfully denied in Mosul.
The militant group could even
potentially use Deir az-Zour as a launchpad for future incursions into
Anbar, Iraq's aforementioned sparsely populated western Sunni Arab-majority province whose major cities, including its provincial capital Ramadi, have been reduced to rubble from the offensives to rout them out.
Daesh
has a long strategy of compensating for past losses of territory
annexed into their caliphate by either launching fresh offensives or
carrying out headline grabbing terror atrocities. For example, after
they lost the Iraqi city of Tikrit in April 2015 they were successfully
able to compensate for that by overrunning the provincial capital of
Anbar and the aforementioned Syrian city of Palmyra in May 2015.

When
they lost the Yezidi city of Sinjar to a Kurdish Peshmerga offensive in
November 2015 they launched the infamous Paris attacks in the same
month.
Today if Daesh loses Mosul, along with Raqqa soon
thereafter, capturing Deir az-Zour could give them a chance to cling
onto some territory, forestall the inevitable loss of conquered
territories that make up their self-styled caliphate and continue to
plot and organize attacks against their many enemies across the world.